In General, In Particular Blog for 8.25.2022

    Last week’s blog contained the phrase “Teaching, like preaching requires an ongoing engagement with literature in general and domain-specific reading in particular.” This week I’d like to discuss each of those two reading strategies in a little more detail. 

    These two strategies are essential for everyone in the Church. If you have chosen a career in the information architecture of the Church; preaching, teaching, leading songs, participating in worship, or really any kind of content-driven purpose, this should be of particular concern. 

    General reading orients us with respect to our full cultural experience. It is incarnational. It is particular in a similar fashion to Jesus' own incarnation, He lived in a particular place, at a particular time, experiencing a particular (mixed) culture. General reading helps us to understand our world as it stands now and how it got to be the way it is. Without that kind of information, it can be difficult to figure out how to approach the “real” world effectively with the Gospel. One of the books I mentioned last week was Newbigin’s The Gospel in a Pluralist Society. This book was a follow-up to his prior work Foolishness to the Greeks. In these two books, written by a career missionary upon his return to Britain, he laid out a compelling case that our Post-Modern, Post-Christian-world requires a nearly cross-cultural level of analysis if we are to articulate the Gospel to it. 

    We live in the world though we stand apart from it. We are embedded in our native culture and though the Gospel provides an alternative narrative to that spoken by our world, if we are to bring the message of Christ to bear in that world, we need to understand that alternative narrative. 

    General reading is a part of that orienting process. The process of understanding the world in which we live so that we might bring the light and love of Christ to life amid a fallen culture of death.  Now let’s consider domain-specific reading. You may not be familiar with that term. I’ll explain it as we describe the experience. 

    Doctors are supposed to know more about human anatomy, biology, and the various organs and systems which make up the human body than the rest of us. It’s their job to help fix us when we’re broke. They need more advanced knowledge than those of us who are not medical professionals.  They acquire this knowledge through a specific educational experience. They continue to learn throughout their medical practice so that they may keep abreast of new discoveries, advancements in treatment, and cumulative global medical experience. 

    Many, if not most doctors specialize. In each specialized area of medical study, there is a specific developing body of knowledge that an experienced practitioner would be expected to know—by their peers and prospective patients. So,  a general practitioner builds upon their general medical education by trying to be broadly informed about a wide range of common health issues. A pediatrician focuses on the illnesses and maladies common in children. A heart surgeon and an orthopedic surgeon both show up at work to operate but they have explored the literature and procedures of different specialties. 

    This general principle is found throughout most professions. Grade school teachers and college professors both teach. Their domain-specific training is different.  Like the medical analogy a fifth-grade teacher will likely be a generalist, a college professor focused on a specific subject area or discipline. 

    As a preacher, your domain-specific reading will primarily consist of Biblical Studies, Theology, and Practical Ministry. These are the basic disciplines you will need for a lifetime of ministry. Like a doctor, you need to work hard to keep fresh. We cannot possibly consider every single new approach to exegesis or theological development. However, it is important to keep your fingers on the pulse of your profession. Like rumors of new diseases that drive patients to look on the internet, or parents who do the same with respect to new approaches to education, you will meet people who have questions about your chosen area of concentration. You need to be the expert in your town, and certainly in your church. This expertise is gained through long days of studying and working through the issues which drive contemporary Biblical studies and pastoral issues. Another word for this kind of reading—is work. It’s a part of the job. If you don’t want to do this, you need to get out of the ministry for the same reason you or I will not go to a doctor who has stopped developing her professional muscles. 

    We do the general reading at night and on weekends for leisure. This reading needs to be combined with the other Media which transmit messages in culture. Cinema, T.V., Internet, social media. As an added twenty-first Century bonus, you can often do Cinema (which used to involve “going to the Movies”) and T.V. In the same streaming app. 

    The Christian author C.S. Lewis described himself as “arising in the morning with a thirst for print.” That’s how we grow and improve our general knowledge and perspective of the world and that’s how we get better at what we are called to do and be. Start early. Dive deep.  Move broadly across a variety of sources. Keep fresh and you’ll always be deepening your understanding of the world and articulating a faithful response from the Word. 

Random Musings on Reading 8.18.2022

    My name is Bob, and my blog has been idle for a few weeks. First, I spent an awesome week at Oil Belt Christian Service Camp. We had a great group of Jr. High students and I kid you not, it was simply one of the best weeks of camp I’ve ever worked. The second reason I have not blogged during August is that Mrs. Beckman and I had a bout with COVID-19. (It seems a bit odd to put that -19 on the end of the title of the disease, it is 2022 and all. But I digress.) Even after we were able to get beyond the symptoms, infectious period, and prescription side effects it took a while for me to get back into the swing of things. 

    So, here is my first blog post dropping mid-month. The stuff I had planned to write does not seem to be all that interesting right now, so I return to one of my favorite topics: reading. Some of you, who regularly follow this blog may be asking, “Is reading all that you think about?” The answer is “no” but it is high on the list. 

    The first few days back from the ‘VID I was working through 1 John material. I’d lean back in my chair and kind of look at the shelves. I’ve got a couple of shelves where reside “perennials”. Books I read every other year or so. They are crucial texts which have helped me to understand the complexities of early-mid 21st-century life. 

    School is starting at all levels. Whilst praying today I was in awe of all the teachers and school administrators I was praying for at the start of the school year. These individuals give me hope for public education and the example of Jesus in the classrooms of my fair state. Teaching, like preaching, requires an ongoing engagement with literature in general and domain-specific reading in particular. Today let’s think about general engagement with the world in which we live. 

    We read for several reasons. We read for information. We read to strengthen our understanding of the world. We read to disabuse ourselves of the notion that we have all (or most, or even some) of the answers. If our program of regular and planned reading is to be impactful there needs to be a baseline; Firm ground upon which we can base our understanding and analysis of the world. This of course assumes you are well-grounded in reading scripture and engaging in regular and focused exegesis; you are a preacher, after all. Here is a bit of a baseline for what I would consider a good, basic, healthy, 21st Century cross-disciplinary bibliography. 

• Neil Postman: Amusing Ourselves to Death.

• Thomas Kuhn: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

• William Manchester: A World Lit Only by Fire.

• Leslie Newbigin: The Gospel in a Pluralist Society.

• Jacques Ellul: The Humiliation of the Word.

• Max DePree: Leading Without Power. 

• Douglass Hofstadter: Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. 

• Michael A. Hiltzik: Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the dawn of the Computer Age. 

• John A. Byrne: The Whiz Kids: The Founding Fathers of American Business and the Legacy, They         Left Us. 

    Each of these books is readable. They are also accessible, with the author/title you can do an Amazon search and find them easily. They are available in either digital or analog form depending on your general reading preference. 

    

    For the most part, they are not theological. These books trace a broad arc through the mid-twentieth century which helps us to understand the intellectual, economic, social, and cultural materials which form the basis for twenty-first Century culture. Ours is a culture that is increasingly marked by pluralism(s) of all kinds, technology, information and data-driven analysis of all disciplines, and renewed discussions about the underlying religious motivations of social structures. There are many solutions to the problems arising in each of these areas. These books are helpful because they do not directly address the problems we face or offer solutions. Instead, they provide a cross-disciplinary, high-altitude way of understanding how our world got to be the way it is. 

    

    Everyone thinks that their era is unique. This group of works gives some indication of what makes the twenty-first Century unique and what kind of Christian response might be needed, but you need to make the connections. As a preacher/theologian (or teacher) it is your job to make those connections and provide that response. These books:

• Help us understand the rise of information culture.

• Remind us of the complexity of our data-driven analytical culture.

• Identify how quantification and information shape the Post-Modern world. (This can also be described as “the rise of the quants.” If you don’t know what a “quant” is, then this reading will help you to muck out a definition.)

• Show us that issues which seemed old-fashioned are still germane in a high-density information culture. 

• Approach pluralism as an opportunity more than an obstacle. 

    As Christians, we look at humanity through a collection of common attributes. Humans are made in God’s image. Humans are fallen. Humans have great gifts. Humans have horrible weaknesses. Humans do evil things. Humans are redeemable. Each of us who works in the “information space” should have some workable understanding of how we apply Biblical descriptions to a world that seems far removed from a time when Christian categories were broadly understood, debated, and respected. Complaining about biases and prejudices does little good unless we have an underlying conception about how our culture has evolved. 

    These books help us to situate this theological conception of human nature within the actual, ever-evolving bounds of the “real world.” To address the fallen condition of humanity we need to function like zoologists who carefully evaluate the environmental conditions in which species live so that we might understand the synergy between habitat and adaptation. Trying to apply biblical principles and theological strategies without a basic grasp of culture is like trying to study animal species without a basic appreciation for geography, diet, weather, and ecosystem. You can do it, of course. Much of your data will be so wrong that your conclusions will be off base. 

    I sit here in my study composing these words with a computer, on a continent, filled with diverse human cultures, at a particular time in history. My mission is to make disciples. Presuming a knowledge of Scripture and the leadership of the Holy Spirit one of the best preparations for making disciples is field and academic study of the people we are trying to reach. This reading list gives you a pretty good start towards understanding what has made twenty-first-century man.